As an alternative, the assessment of discontinuous media composed of discrete bodies and contacts in between has increasingly been investigated using the discrete element method (DEM) first developed by Cundall. The interface behaviour of traditional planar masonry joints has been widely studied with advanced non-linear computational formulations, mostly based on the homogenized finite element analysis (FEA) at the micro-scale level, detailing blocks, mortar and the block/mortar interface. In traditional masonry block structures subjected to seismic loading, the joints between units act as planes of weakness due to their low tensile and shear bond strength, while the use of non-planar interlocking joints is recently becoming very popular to improve the mechanical behaviour at block interfaces. units and mortar, strongly affects the in-plane and out-of-plane behaviour of masonry walls under various external loading. The discontinuous and non-homogenous nature of the constitutive elements of masonry, i.e. Throughout the entire history of building construction, masonry has been one of the most common and efficient techniques, due to the simple geometry of units, their affordability, and great structural properties. The analytical and numerical results are compared with each other and against the experimental ones, with interesting remarks on the application of the different approaches. Two different mortars were chosen to make the specimens, which were casted using 3D printed moulds, and different test configurations were set up to simulate shear and torsion-shear failures. A novel experimental investigation on the limiting pure shear and torsion-shear combinations at the lock interface made of cohesive material is also presented. Then, according to a second approach based on the discrete element method, the concave-shaped interlocking block is modelled by convex polyhedrons representing the lock and the main body of the block, considered as individual rigid units stacked over each other with a cohesive contact in between. First, concave, convex and corrected concave formulations provided by the literature for assemblages of rigid blocks with conventional planar joints are extended to model the interlocking block behaviour. Two numerical approaches and a novel ad hoc experimental investigation are proposed to simulate the torsion-shear behaviour by applying eccentrical shear forces to the lock. The interlocking block is a rigid unit which, on its faces, have square cuboidal locks keeping the adjacent/overlapped blocks together and preventing blocks from sliding. In this framework, this paper deals with the assessment of the torsion-shear capacity of the contact interface between the lock and the main body of an interlocking block, assumed to have a cohesive behaviour. Increasing interest has recently been devoted to interlocking blocks/interfaces capable to enhance the sliding resistance of masonry joints to external forces.
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